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Tuesday, March 24, 2009

The first rule of book club is: you have fun at book club

About five years ago, I started a book club - not to read books, necessarily, but just to get out of the house. My husband and I had recently welcomed our first little baby into the world and while she was sweet and wonderful and perfect, I realized after a couple of months that I wasn't doing much of anything else. At all.

I didn't want that to change too much, but having one night a month where I was forced to be an adult sounded pretty good. So I called a few friends, who called a few more friends and the rest is history. We've been going strong for a long time now. We have some new members, some original members and some who come and go as they please. Some of us even read the book.

We theme out the food, open a bottle or two of wine and have a good time. In fact, my smarty pants husband calls it Wine Club.

This past Thursday was my turn to host. Usually, when we have the girls over, Jim will pour drinks and act as host, or disappear upstairs with his laptop. Well, this last time, he stayed downstairs to watch the basketball game - and listen, as it turns out.

Evidently, we had lots of fun - and opinions (stronger opinions as the night grew late. He even timed our book discussion (the jerk) - 17 minutes. His question was: is that what book club is about?

Heck, yes.

Books are about enjoying ourselves and discovering something new, whether that is between the pages - or not. For us, it's a common experience that inspires themed foods for the night, and plenty of side discussions. It's an excuse to get busy people together. It's how we make time for each other each a month.

So should we take it more seriously? Heck, no. Life, like books, needs to be savored.

4 comments:

Oh, I'd like to be in your book club, Angie! I was part of an on-line book club for a while. Eventually, it started to feel too much like homework, especially when some members would email to check and see how far along we were in our reading and then dare to ask why we hadn't finished if we weren't ready for the discussion. Wine and themed foods...that sounds a lot more appealing!

Yes, well we're probably on the other end of the spectrum! I actually gave out prizes last week to the people who finished the book. It ended up being about half of us. But a few others enjoyed hearing about the book so much that they're going to be reading it late. My friend Terri is famous for that - she's usually a month behind, but she gets them read.

The themed foods were especially fun this time because we read To the Nines by Janet Evanovich. As you know, there is plenty of good eating in Stephanie Plum novels.

This sounds like a way for our book club t go. We started out reading the same book and only a percentage actually read it. This last time we each brought books we had read and enjoyed to share. Of course there was a lot of food & wine and mainly chatting. I think it is important for women to take the time to nourish themselves by connecting to other women. If it takes a "book club" to do it, so be it.